Rheumatoid arthritis and coronary artery disease share a common culprit: an important type of immune cell, called a macrophage, that has gone haywire. Stanford investigators have zeroed in on a molecular defect in macrophages' metabolic process that drives both disorders.

Rheumatoid arthritis and coronary artery disease share a common culprit: an important type of immune cell, called a macrophage, that has gone haywire. Stanford investigators have zeroed in on a molecular defect in macrophages' metabolic process that drives both disorders.

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, scleroderma and liver cirrhosis are just a few of a pantheon of confusingly named, difficult-to-treat and sometimes life-threatening diseases caused by the malfunction of …